PERSPECTIVE: A need for neutrality leaves COI unable to govern political ads.(Brief Article)

Political advertising can be powerful stuff. 'Labour isn't working', 'Labour's tax bombshell', 'Labour's double whammy' - all Saatchi & Saatchi-created Conservative Party slogans and, of course, you read them first on posters.

However, such advertising operates beyond the boundaries of most advertising regulation. It is not required to prove its claims and can mislead by inaccuracy and ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise. It is sometimes sanctioned - witness the case of the 'demon eyes' poster at the 1997 election - but not always. In other words, it's an unholy mess.

So we should welcome this week's news of a report into the funding of political parties by the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Downing Street-linked think tank (see news, p4). At last someone has realised the 'part in, part out' approach to political advertising is good for nobody. It is confusing for the general public, it brings advertising in general into disrepute, it is bad for poster contractors and, in the context of an overall drive for higher standards in public life, it is bad for political parties too.

So what's the way forward? According to the IPPR, it is to back an extension of state funding to political parties via free billboards to parties in the same way as they are already allowed party political broadcasts.

All well and good, you might argue, but consider the voter apathy that reigns now. Only 59 per cent of the population bothered to vote in the last ...